


every riven thing

by tomatocages (kittu9)



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Failsafe, Gen, Psychic Bond, Psychological Trauma, Walkabout, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-19
Updated: 2012-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-02 04:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittu9/pseuds/tomatocages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Artemis dies during the training scenario, what does she see?</p><p>This question will be on the final exam.</p><p> Set during <i>Failsafe.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	every riven thing

**Author's Note:**

> I am never not dwelling on the ramifications of Failsafe. 
> 
> This story posits that when Artemis died and M'gann believed it, Artemis ended up caught in M'gann's mind, watching the Failsafe scenario unfold.

 

She was running, her feet clumsy on the ice; she heard M’gann call out to her, and she turned, nocked her arrow in a swift, clean movement, the way she had spent her life practicing. She drew back her elbow and the light caught her, hard; Artemis felt every cell in her body sing out. Death burned, deep to the marrow in her bones, and she was not afraid; she had the vague thought that she’d left her body somewhere, supine on a slab, and that she ought to be waking up. But even as she felt herself drift from one thing and into another—the empty space where she had stood, the body that was about to sneeze and shake itself awake—she heard M’gann cry out, and felt something take hold within her, sharp and sudden and bereft. Something unraveled, deep within the chambers of her heart, and Artemis lost control over the sensation of waking, the sensation of falling, the sensation _of._

The coma, when it came over her, was an expanse of grey ice water, an impression of bottomless sinking; perhaps it was nothing at all.

&

When Artemis finally wakes, her head is a tunnel without light. Everything hurts, in an unfamiliar way; out of habit, she checks herself for injuries, for bruises or blood or broken bones, but finds herself whole. She rolls from her side up onto her feet; her joints protest and she wobbles inelegantly until she comes to rest against the wall of the darkest cave she’s ever seen. It’s odd: she remembers running over ice and snow, her feet warm in her boots. Artemis remembers being ready, the sense of the most open of spaces jammed up in the forefront of her mind alongside the team-link and the trajectory of the next shot. Never one to dwell (or, rather, one who is always dwelling), she rolls her shoulders and notes that she is unarmed; perhaps this is only a test.

 _It’s always a test_ , the low, cynical part of Artemis’ brain reminds her; and that’s true enough, so she starts moving, cataloging the shape of her surroundings. The cave is low-ceilinged and honeycombed with passages, and the walls have odd, reflective spots that don’t resemble any mineral deposit she’s ever seen. Every time she turns her head, she catches a flash of movement from the corner of her eye, and every time she turns to look, the walls go featureless and slick again. It’s unnerving; she starts looking for anything that will hold an edge in a fight.

—And then she sees it, in living color: the fire creeping up the walls begins to play and replay the slow bloom of the cannons and the way she’s looked in the light. After watching the clip all the way through, Artemis _knows_. She isn’t stupid, and the shuddery feeling all around is at once recognizable: she was here before, in Bialya, and she is here again now because she has died; M’gann can’t or won’t let it go. Artemis is oddly touched, even if this is the weirdest memorial or whatever, because it’s certainly not what she expected, but then: Artemis hadn’t known what to expect, even if she has always believed she’ll die young.

She hopes Batman isn’t the one to tell her mother, even if it is his goddamn city; that man hasn’t got a tender bone in him.

&

Still, she doesn’t feel dead; it feels more like every time she’s fallen under water and nearly drowned (not just missions; once, the public pool, her father had dropped her in the deep end and told her to swim. She was six, she’d floundered for a long and heedless moment until he’d caught the crisscrossing straps of her suit and hauled her back up. _Dad,_ she had started crying, _Dad, Dad, I don’t know how_. He hadn’t known; after, he taught her to float and she’d learned a breaststroke, and she’s never been afraid since, she just hates the water and the world beneath).

But this is a fact: Artemis is dead. She has died. She exists only in that the memory of her is haunting M’gann’s unearthly skull.

She pretends she is dreaming—Artemis dreams every night, strange and vivid, of things she has done and of things she likely will do. This cannot be worse—but things happen that she would never think of on her own. The tangles and walls of the cave mirror back snatches of memories that aren’t hers, flashes of deep places and the sense of violent shunning. It feels like an echo Artemis has never quite been able to shake, the fun-house mirrors of M’gann’s mind curving up around her and twisting with grief. The feeling is an assault, painful in its intensity. Artemis can exist like a secret painfully kept, forever: M’gann will never let her go.

&

Tucked away in a small, Artemis-shaped pocket of M’gann’s mind, Artemis does what Artemis is good at doing, generally: she watches, and waits. She sees what M’gann sees, as the battle continue to unfold: the fire burning, blooming wide open across the face of the earth. Artemis isn’t surprised, because she’s always known that the world would keep on turning, regardless of her presence in it. Seeing the world crumble through M’gann’s eyes is devastating regardless, because M’gann feels betrayed by every death; her grief permeates the iridescent, bruise-shaped place where Artemis waits.

And after a little more time, she starts to walk, if only for something to do with her feet. The walls follow her, and Artemis wonders if she’s still a person, or if she’s become a ghost. Ex-Artemis. Un-Artemis. (Robin would know.)

&

Wherever Kaldur goes when he dies, it is not here, and that’s a goddamn shame; he’s the best of them. She looks for him anyway, even though the action’s pointless, because he’d do the same for her.

Artemis wanders through the corridors set aside for her, each doorway arching over her head and fading away once she’s stepped through. She keeps moving, even as she loses understanding of any pattern that might exist. It’s easier this way: she can hear the sound of guns in M’gann’s ears, and Artemis is not a child. She is fifteen years old and this is war; she knows what happens next.

“War is a force that gives us meaning,” her father used to say, with that look that wasn’t a laugh. “It’s in our blood, and blood will out.”

She wonders what Kaldur would say—what he would have said. Probably something serene and full of teeth, like, _war is terrible and also necessary_. She’s not convinced.

&

But the worst is, even though she is dead—even though the world has fallen away and even the paths she’s wandered have turned viscous and deep—she knows that this will fade away. Artemis knows, in the way she knows she’ll remember a thing forgotten, that _this is only a test_. She just wishes it would be over soon, because while M’gann is pulled through the earth, unresisting, Artemis is watching the way the alien ship is about to go up in flames with the boys locked in it. She recognizes the look on Wally’s face ( _oh, god,_ she thinks. _The look on his face. His face_ ), she knows the set of Robin’s jaw.

She forgets, sometimes, how young they all are, and how brave.

Artemis doesn’t look away, even when their bodies become smudges against the fire, even when the brightness leaves her blind. They deserve nothing less.

&

Something breaks apart and Artemis thinks, _I must go back_ —

What is _back_ —back is a world made of white, where she turned and stared into the sun; back is the apartment in Gotham, full of a mother Artemis remembers and does not know; back is the cave and its every odd, beloved resident; back is the feel of her bow in hand, the sure knowledge of all its mechanisms—

&

It is, of course, M’gann’s death that hits Artemis hard enough to wake her, and when she struggles out of the afterlife, she’s glad it’s Red Tornado who moves to help her. She leans into the unflinching palms Red Tornado sets against her shoulders and realizes that she loves every fragment of his artificial body; he is steady enough to hold her, he is _safe_. Disjointed as the exercise has left her, one thing is clear: she wants to vomit up everything that has happened to her teammates, she wants to do something that will make them all feel clean again ( _blood will out_ , Artemis thinks disjointedly. She is going to break their hearts). She wonders why the fuck she even came to this training session; she knows, she knows what it’s like to lose, and couldn’t that have been enough to save them?

None of this matters in the aftermath, just like nothing much ever matters at the end of a thing gone wrong, and Artemis feels sapped, as though something has tapped into her and drained her dry. The dying as fine, she thinks, even as she knows it was not, even though she heard the echoes of her team’s ragged horror reverberating in M’gann’s head. __


End file.
